Sunday 3-7-10

1/2 Marathon Training - Sunday 9 a.m. Shelby Bottoms By far the most important thing you can do to prepare for a 1/2 marathon is to run long distances.  You can do tons of speed work, lots of yoga, running drills, hard 3 mile runs etc... but if you never do any long runs you are going to have a disappointing 1/2 marathon experience.  (In fact, if you check the training plan, both the intermediate and advanced runners will run more than 13 miles at least once before race day.)

If there was a close second to long runs in order of importance, it would be the long steady state tempo run.  Meaning that you run for 5-10 miles at a medium hard effort (88-90% max heart rate).  This is what we are doing this week.  Take your 3 mile time trial from last week (or a recent 5k race); add 35 seconds per mile.  That is your goal pace for this week's run.  For example, Zach ran 20:49 last week for 3 miles.  That equates to about 6:56 per mile.  So this week he will run about 7:30 pace.

So determine your pace, and after a 1-2 mile warm-up, you will run 4,5,or 6 miles at this pace, and end with a 1-2 mile cool down.  Side note: I understand that the greenway does not simulate the 1/2 marathon course very well, but we do these runs at Shelby because every quarter mile is marked on the path, and it's easy to keep a nice steady effort level.

The best water stop ever...

East Nasty and Fleet Feet are going to be responsible for the 12 mile water stop for the Tom King 1/2 marathon on March 12 ..er.. I mean March 13th.  Thanks to the Jones Brothers, this could be the best water stop in the history of mankind.   The water stop is located on Davidson under the Interstate, and the lead runners should be getting there at about 9:30.

More details coming this week...right now all you need to know is:  1) if you are running Tom King, wear your East Nasty gear and prepare to be overwhelmed or 2) be at the water stop  if you are not running and help support the Nasties!

See you on Sunday!

Mark